The spice ginger is similarly named in many PIE languages. It has only an accidental relationship to gingerly. There is general agreement that gingerly comes from a Latin word meaning high born or aristocratic. The road from Latin to English is not so obvious. Gingerly once meant with a careful mincing step, aping the dancing of the gentry, at some time in the past. It was not a word of admiration but of derision. The mincing step suggested walking carefully and thus the word expanded to handling anything carefully.

Mark your package "handle with care", "fragile", "this side up" and other requests for handling a package gingerly. The notes are wasted because the machinery that handles package delivery by any parcel service, is not trained to read your notes. Its best to insure your package. I engineered some of these machines in a past life.